In all my angst about my relationship with Israel, one thing is clear: Israel sells itself as a democracy but continues to support laws which discriminate against women's full and equal access to all facets of Jewish life, and which refuse to acknowledge liberal Judaism's growing presence in Israel.One of the things that has long confounded me is that, at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, women are not allowed to pray while wearing tallitot (prayer shawls), nor are they allowed to read aloud from a Torah scroll in worship.Women of the Wall has done powerful work to change this paradigm, and to break down barriers to full, egalitarian access to the Kotel. WOW lobbies the Israeli government to reduce the power and influence of the ultra-Orthodox in political matters and is currently working to establish an egalitarian section at the Wall that would not be under the control of the Haredi religious leadership. As a liberal Jewish woman who prays with tallit and leyns aloud from Torah in my community, I support their efforts. If I am ever able to travel to Israel, I would like to be able to pray at the Kotel as the Jew that I am, and in the way I pray at home.

For more information about WOW's campaign to promote the visibility of egalitarian women's prayer, check out #letmytorahgo.

(Below: Me and my colleagues at the Women Cantors' Network conference, June 2015, Austin, TX. The placard reads: "Our tallitot are not provocative, they are our prerogative.")